University of Florida | January 20-22, 2017

What is SwampHacks?

SwampHacks is a 36 hour open coding event where students become creators. In the time allotted, teams of students ‘hack’ together a project which is then judged and ranked among other participant projects. Along the way, students mingle in activities, present their projects, and spend quality time getting to know sponsors for a fully immersive coding experience.
Sponsorship provides a look into new prospects within the software developing community of Florida.

Why Florida?

Florida has been an untapped reservoir of talent in the past few years. The University of Florida jumped from unranked in the Spring 2015 MLH hacking standing to 29th in the Fall 2015 MLH standing, then 2nd in the Spring 2016 standing (behind University of Waterloo, ranking UF #1 in the US). In one year we disrupted the entire previous hacking hierarchy of school rankings and carved out a place of our own.
We’ve also seen incredible growth in the number of hackers, including a more diverse demographic. With organizations such as WiCSE (Women in Computer Science and Engineering) being vital in the creation of SwampHacks, an open environment to all hackers has become a staple within the UF hacking community.
Rapid expansion in student participants leave ripe openings for new talent. Due to the incredible distance from Florida to the cluster of hackathons in the NorthEast or West Coast schools, plenty of skilled students are foregoing hackathons opportunities in further areas. Due to this distance, a strong community has began to form in our state, prompting the establishment of the first inter-collegiate, state-wide hackathon organization: Florida Hackers. This network of hundreds of students will be a key player in SwampHacks 2017.
As the largest hackathon of Florida, SwampHacks will not be tapping into the talent of our own university but will also serve as a nexus for the Florida hackathon season. Our combination of prominence on campus and in our state sets SwampHacks as a gateway opportunity for fresh minds to meet established companies and showcase their hidden abilities.

Previously at SwampHacks...

more overall participants

between the first SwampHacks in 2015 to our second iteration in 2016

largest Florida hackathon

our growth also set apart our hackathon as the largest collegiate hackathon in the state of Florida

brought some more friends

our percentage of attendees who were non-UF students increased between 2015 and 2016 by 27%

What’s new with SwampHacks 2017?

more hours, more hacking

from the original 18 hours to last year's 24 hours, we will be increasing our hacking time to 36 hours

expanded reach

our growth also set apart our hackathon as the largest collegiate hackathon in the state of Florida

invest in quality growth

we are increasing our projected attendees by only 100 and investing our funds into a better user experience

How did some of our past sponsors like it?

I really enjoyed the sense of excitement in the environment on campus, and was really impressed by how creative some of the teams’ hacks were, and how well put together several of them were after such a short build period.
It was great to be part of an event that encourages students to get together, work as a team, and enjoy the process of building something from scratch and sharing it with others. I’m looking forward to next year!

Heather M. Fullen

Business Analytics Manager at Infinite Energy

We’re currently working to expand our monthly active users and signups (that’s our main metric as a startup for getting us funding and growth), and SwampHacks luckily did well in that regard.
A lot of hackathons are very serious and very focused on prize winnings, but SwampHacks felt like a lot of people were there to learn and genuinely enjoy the community around them.
I’d definitely come back.